Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Organic industry takes a hit



The organic movement is taking a heavy hit from a new report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine today.

Dr. Dena Bravata says organic food is no more nutritious than regular food and that much of what’s marketed in the United States has never been properly inspected to ensure it is meeting organic-movement standards.

Mischa Popoff, a former organic farmer and organic-organization inspector, commented on the study for the Heartland Institute of Stanford University, said the "dirty little secret" about inspection is now out of the bag.

Dr. Bravata found that some organic foods had marginally more nutrients than conventional and genetically-modified crop varieties.

She also found that the organic food had slightly lower pesticide residues and fewer antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

But her main finding “flies in the face of claims being made by organic activists that organic food is always much more nutritious, purer, and hence safer, than conventional and biotech food,” the Heartland Institute said in an e-mail sent to me.

The e-mail also says “Heartland supports the principles and philosophy of organic food production and is always quick to stress that honest organic farmers – of which there are many across America – support the concept of organic field testing because they have nothing to hide, and everything to gain.
“Sadly though, domestic organic farmers fill only a small and ever-shrinking minority share of the $30-billion-per-annum market for organic food in the United States. The rest is imported from countries with notoriously lax environmental standards, such as China, Mexico, and Brazil. And that food always, believe it or not, comes with the USDA’s good name on the label. And it’s all based on paperwork, without a single test to verify purity or nutritional value.
“No wonder Dr. Bravata’s study reads like a bad report card your kids would rather you didn’t see. We hate to mix metaphors at Heartland, but it would appear the organic cat is well on its way out of the bag.”